A ‘Star Trek’ communicator is born, via the iPhone 4

“Star Wars” has its popular light-saber apps, so it’s time for “Star Trek” to step up its game, and it appears that has happened with the official Star Trek Captain’s Log application for the iPhone 4.

Hopefully a little more interactive than the “Battlestar Galactica” cylon detector, the Captain’s Log app is supposed to make your iPhone 4 become a Starfleet communicator. If only iPhones were flip phones!

Besides some generic features, it allows you to choose a preferred Enterprise class level, maybe as a Federation captain, or be in engineering like Geordi and

Scotty

, be a science/medical officer like Bones, or join the ranks of the Klingons or Romulans.

Share logs or keep them private, it even uses the iPhone 4’s retina display, multitasking capabilities and gyroscope support, showcasing a 3-D model of the Starship Enterprise.

It would be nice to imagine that they’re already thinking of the expanded capabilities that could make the communicator into something more like a tricorder: maybe a bartender’s drink list from Guinan or an interstellar WebMD from Dr. Crusher or a Yowza!–type shopping section created by Quark … or an app that allows the iPhone 4 to shape-shift into any device you need, like Odo!

Apps like these break the traditional idea of how a phone is used. As more and more app developers come up with ideas on how to enhance the user experience in the growing market, it will get tougher for a company to compete. That being said, I believe both business and casual users will have a plethora of apps to keep them entertained on the go and that is great.